The present invention relates generally to wireless transducers, and more particularly to the self-powered wireless transducer for monitoring physical conditions in external structure, such as excessive vibrations in a bearing.
In many present day industrial settings, machinery is run 24 hours a day and seven days a week, thereby making it imperative that maintenance be performed at specified intervals and non-orderly shutdowns must be avoided. Any breakdown of such machinery, or a non-orderly shutdown because of a part defect, can result in expensive downtime. One of the largest failure classifications in such industries is motor failure, and motor failure is most commonly associated with internal bearing failures and/or electrical over-heating resulting in insulation breakdown and shorting. Many maintenance personnel and plant managers realize that preventive maintenance is a necessity in such applications, and therefore, periodically replace components, such as entire motors in critical areas with new motors, whether or not they actually need replacement. Such regularly scheduled maintenance may very well be more costly than necessary, but most maintenance personnel and plant managers are willing to pay the cost of replacing an adequately functioning motor, rather than take the risk of a non-orderly shutdown during peak production periods.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a system and method that could monitor such machinery well in advance of a failure so that maintenance can be performed at scheduled downtimes, while at the same time avoiding replacing perfectly good functioning components. Even a system that can predict a non-orderly shutdown within an hour, allows an orderly shutdown to be accomplished in a period of time in which maintenance personnel can be available with the necessary components that need to be replaced.
Further, each machine may have several motors, and each motor may have several bearings that need to be monitored. It would therefore be desirable to also have a system that could not only detect that there is a problem in a bearing, but to also pinpoint which bearing in which motor needs to be replaced.
It would also be desirable to have such a system that is wireless, which not only makes installation easier, it also avoids unnecessary wires in remote locations that are typically hard to get to and do not have existing low voltage wire harnesses to run the wires thereto. Additionally, it would be desirable to have such a system that is self-powered to avoid scheduled battery replacement.